Video game cloud streaming shaken up as Nvidia loses more big names, Microsoft readies its market killer Nvidia’s GeForce game-streaming service has lost four big-name game publishers, with Xbox Games Studios, Warner Bros, Codemasters, and Klei Entertainment pulling their titles by the end of the week. The decision comes as Microsoft prepares to launch its own game streaming service, Project XCloud, and high-end streaming company …
I honesty don't see the point of streaming video games services. You need expensive and fast Internet, pay a monthly fee, they can remove games anytime they want, and your Internet provider ends charging you extra even if you went for the so called "Unlimited" plan.
Maybe it does work in places with a decent and fast Internet service, like Japan.
But definitely not something for you if you have a data cap.
I might be the target market for this - fast internet to cope with the family streaming their stuff at peak times, a PC that's on Low graphics settings and could do with several hundred pounds with of upgrades... or I could pay £5 to £15 a month...
Game choice is all though - if the game your mates play isn't on the service you use then it sucks... if you end up paying for two services you might as well upgrade the PC and have both the graphics, fps and lower ping.
"Maybe it does work in places with a decent and fast Internet service, like Japan."
Ehhhh, the obvious truth is that if you paid $10 a month you'd pay $120 a year, a new GPU costs at least 5x that every 3 years (at most) for "high end gaming"... so clearly it can be much cheaper. The problem is the glitch. It's like a scratched CD or record, it has always destroyed the experience and streaming anything at any speed will always have many more disruptions. So are these so called high end gamers the purists they claim to be or practical pretenders?
It has it's place and can help many people play games on lesser hardware. Ultimately people will bite the bullet and upgrade their gaming hardware. As long as they can smoothly switch between platforms for games they have bought I see no downside to having this in the mix.
@Bugsy11
"
It's only a matter of time before ARM Macs dominate the desktop and Arcade leads marketshare in gaming. Resistance is futile. Muwahahaha
"
Though I loved the ARM chip (I worked on lots of Acorn RiscOS games in the nineties) I wouldn't want anything with the Apple name on it, given it is impossible to get it reliably serviced (without losing everything, and/or getting ripped off) or anything made by Microsoft with one in it, as they seem to use it as an opportunity to lock down the platform.
I was one of the victims of surface Pro 4 flickergate, late in appearing and well out of any warranty. But a genuine manufacturer's fault regardless. I did manage to get a local company (Mobitech) to swap out my screen, for £200, something which both apple and MS wouldn't have approved of I guess.
So going forward, I will buy only hardware which is easy to repair, or cheap enough to throw away, and will probably move over to Linux, as this is the only platform which is worthy of any third party support.
As for these games servers returning 4k video - I think my reactions are now too slow to care about an extra 1 millisecond or whatever at my age.
>As for Microsoft’s upcoming Project XCloud service - due to launch anytime soon - it won’t require users to own an Xbox (unlike Sony’s Playstation service).
This isn't accurate - you can download PlayStation Now for PC:
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/playstation-now/ps-now-on-pc/
Market fragmentation means you have to pay for many services just to ensure you can get to play what you want (it's bad enough needing to have Steam, Epic, Uplay, Origin, Battlenet, Wargaming.net, Arc and gamesessions installed - but at least the launchers are "free") . At least with GOG the "Galaxy" launcher is optional.
Of course the main problem with streaming is the weakest link - your ISP. Can I rely on my ISP not falling over when I want to kick back and game? Well if experience is anything to go by the answer is a solid no. Sorry streaming services it is bad enough when origin goes down and takes down my EA library with it (offline can be enabled but getting into offline mode when the EA servers are down is a giant faff) at least I have other games I can play. Entrusting my leisure time to a streaming service isn't for me and I would need to realy make use of it to justify another expense.
I'm not putting my money in something as volatile as this. $5 or $10 a month soon adds up. I've got friends who have ended up reviewing what they're paying for and cutting subscriptions.The monthly fee actually made them feel like they should be using the services so that they were getting their monies worth. Just like the gym memberships that were never used. And at some point, its unsustainable.
I've got three BBC B micros and 4 Original Xboxes. I'm happy :-)
That statement leapt out at me as well. The people paying for this are the ones who don't really care that much about gaming except that they want it to be prettier than their mid-range GPU can handle. The vast majority of serious competitive gamers start by turning all the graphics settings down to absolute minimum. Anything that adds latency for any reason is an absolute no-no.
Quote: Gamers pay Nvidia $5 a month (for now) to run games they have already bought at a far higher performance level and speed than their devices can manage.
What devices is this being compared to?
From what I can see, the nVidia Now service is capped at 1080p and 60fps (with occasional 120fps), all dependant on the games. Which is about the same as a mid range PC. So saying 'far higher' is only really valid if people are running a potato at home. Not saying some people aren't running a potato, and that those people wouldn't get an uplift at least in GFX with this service, but the wording is rather inaccurate for anyone with a mid range or higher gaming PC/Laptop, (or even the 'pro/enhanced' versions of current XBox or PlayStation).
Quote: , it means ordinary gamers can compete with those on high-end gaming machines, which cost thousands of dollars...
What are you defining as a high end PC? If you're talking about something that can match, or beat GeForce Now, then that's not high end, and certainly not thousands!
A low to mid range PC, that would match and even outperform GeForceNow at 1080p would cost around ~$650 *.
Bump that to ~$1000 * and you'll get a reasonably high end 1440p 60Hz system that would be far better than GeForce Now.
* These are real prices based on pcpartpicker just now, so should be doable.
1st system Ryzen 3600 + AM4 mobo + 8GB RAM + small SSD + RX590 + case + PSU
2nd system Ryzen 3600X + AM4 mobo + 16GB RAM + 500GB fast Samsung SSD + RT 5700 XT + case + PSU
Throw in a 3700X and a RTX 2070 Super (only ~5% slower than an RTX 2080), and it's getting proper high end, fast 1440p. reasonable 4k gaming, and that's still only a little over $1300.
Even sticking a RTX 2080Ti in doesn't break $2000 unless you go for one of the extreme editions, $1850 for basically as high end as it gets (unless you go silly).
If you do want to get to thousands, get an Intel CPU, such as a 9700K * or 9900K (the newer Comet Lake ones are just a rehash), then you can get above $2000 with a 2080Ti, but whilst you get a little more FPS on average with the 9700K (and a fair bit more with the 9900K), it's not really worth the extra money. (Also with the AMD platform, you can easily upgrade the CPU later anyway, to a high end 3900X etc, or even the upcoming 4000 series).
* The 9700K whilst expensive, is also only 8 core 8 thread, so for anything muti-threaded, a 3700X (8 core 16 thread), tends to be much faster. So unless the system is only ever going to be for gaming, and also wont be used to do streaming from it, the 3700X is a better option.
All of this also assumes you are buying everything from new. If you've got an existing rig, you could like save money with things like existing case, drives, PSU etc.
Note, none of the above includes displays or controllers, as you'd need to have those anyway to use GeForceNow.
Quote: With even a microsecond meaning the difference between winning and losing, it is something many are prepared to pay for.
Just using GeForce Now with it's added built in latency will be enough to disadvantage anyone using the service against pretty much any PC (or console for that matter) player, even someone on a low end/last gen PC, as all the PC gamer has to do is drop the GFX settings down to medium to low, to bump up their FPS. Something many competitive gamers already do.
One last word, not saying any sort of PC building is for everyone, and of course some people simply either can't afford even a basic gaming PC, or have other priorities for the money (family etc). So I can see services like this being potentially useful for them, just don't try to make them out to be something they are not, or spout inaccuracies like over inflated costs for building a PC.
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